Social Bookmarking

To Tag or not to Tag?







Reflections on the Process of Learning About the Tool

Social Bookmarking? When I saw this on the assignment page I had no clue what it was and thought, how can I use a bookmark on a computer? and how can bookmarking be social?

Yes, I had no clue. And I wasn't alone. Friends and co-workers seemed to have no clue also which made me feel better. The Common Craft video Social Bookmarking in Plain English and the Social Bookmarking:Ideal Guide for Beginners helped to clear up the fog.


Basically, social bookmarking is an online method of storing, organizing, searching and sharing chosen web pages. It lets users store links they like and share them with others.
Did you know there are about 125 social bookmarking sites?! I found that Del.icio.us was the most frequently discussed social bookmarking site, discussed in several articles such as Tags Help Make Libraries Delicious and Cool Tools: Best of Social Bookmarking . Will Richardson discusses both Diigo and del.icio.us but claims that delicious is his personal favourite because it is simple to use and great for sharing links.
I also read about Webnotes as discussed in What's Next for Social Bookmarking but it seems to be specifically designed for libraries and I wanted to be able to use it for both personal and professional reasons. I like the broader aspects of delicious better.
So I chose to sign up with delicious and start bookmarking. The sign-up process was quick and painless and after installing it to my computer, I was directed to the Getting Started page with instructions about the add-on, how to save, browse, and use the toolbar. This page was really useful in helping me as a beginner. I like the cute little toolbar buttons that popped up on my computer, too.




Discussion of the Tool in Terms of My Own Personal Learning



May the bookmarking process begin!




I will admit, I became a little overexcited after I installed those cute little toolbar buttons. I love organization, which is part of the reason why being a librarian is my calling. This new knowledge was great. Instead of relying on my Favourites toolbar (which, believe me, is way too full), I could just click the button and easily store each site by KEYWORD and TAG! Very exciting for me. I have so many random websites in emails that I have saved or in files somewhere that I often want to access but can't remember where they are. I think social bookmarking must have been invented by a virgo, as we seem to be a little obsessive about organization. Anything that organizes the chaotic read/write web must be a good thing.
Websites such as Thunder Bay Public Library’s site (and this blog!) have delicious tag clouds so that topics can be accessed with a click.

While researching this new tool I came across 2 new words:
Metadata and Folksonomy. The first time I saw them I stared at them blankly but I now know what they mean:
Metadata is used to describe tags and descriptions of your websites in social bookmarking sites.
Folksonomy uses metadata to create a shared classification system, such as social bookmarking sites.

For those of you that like learning new words, here's one more:
Adjuvant(n): a person or thing that aids or helps. This was my Word of the Day.
I have to say, I have found social bookmarking to be an adjuvant in my personal learning!

Some of the advantages of social bookmarking that I have discovered are:

1) Making connections through the development of a collaborative community
2) Having access to other peoples resources in a shared setting
3) Learning other perspectives and insights around your topic
4) Developing organizational skills
5) Filtering research to include sites that are relevant to your topic
6) Easy to learn how to use and to access your bookmarks

7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking also discusses reasons to be involved with social bookmarking: "This process allows like-minded individuals to find one another and create new communities of users that continue to influence the ongoing evolution of folksonomies and common tags for resources. Using a folksonomy-based tool for research lets you take advantage of the insights of other users to find information related to the topic you are researching, even in areas that aren’t obviously connected to the primary topic."

Though it may not be for everyone, this tool is definitely for me at this stage in my life. I was able to begin to create a network of interesting and useful websites and will continue to add to my tags with many more sites of interest.



Discussion of the Tool in Terms of Teaching and Learning





TAG - You're it!






I have website addresses stored in files from Professional Development days, in emails from other librarians, and on scraps of paper on my bulletin board (not to mention my enormous, unorganized favourites folder on my computer).
Now, I can take all of these websites that are useful for teaching and tag them in my delicious account.

I have already started the process: I made a tag titled "authors" which has sites for children's authors and books, I have a "research" tag including useful research sites, a "teaching" tag for broader aspects of the profession, and more. I think I would mostly use social bookmarking (at least at first) for my own professional resources. My plan is to create a tag for every topic that I am teaching - I have started with "ecosystems" for now and have found some great sites with ideas to use with my class.

I would like to introduce this to my fellow staff members as I think some of them would really appreciate this concept of collaboration.
I would also like to introduce this to my grade 6/7 students. I would begin by bookmarking some sites for them to research. I like Will Richardson's idea of having the student's name as my tag and writing them a personal comment like he does: "Meredith, this is a great site to use in your research. Check out the site on Africa. Mr. R."
If I was using the tool this way, I would be sure to mark my bookmark privacy setting as 'private.' If I wasn't interested in the social aspect for some of my bookmarking, I could also set up some Google Bookmarks on my iGoogle page, which is another way to ensure privacy.

I could also set up groups for different grade levels (eg. grade 6 and grade 7) or different levels of learners. There is potential for struggling learners to be set up with highlighted, simplified sites and for gifted students to be able to search out and bookmark their own sites.
I think delicious could also be useful for novel studies, with tags set up by book titles.
Librarians could use it to tag by genre or type of book (eg. mystery or classics). They could even create a digital dewey decimal system for cataloguing books online.
I came across a site called librarything.com which is a site to connect socially around the books you read. I tested it out and it passed with flying colours. I like how you can search books by title (eg. Twilight) or keyword (eg. vampires) and there are book ratings, discussions and suggestions of similar books recommended by members. Also being able to see the book jacket itself was great for a visual person like me.

Overall, this has been a beneficial learning experience for me and will be very useful in my personal life and in my professional life. TAG - you're it! Now get tagging!